Merch Madness #3: Sonic Nendoroid

Welcome to Merch Madness #3! How on Earth I’ll fill in for the amazing Nemain is beyond me, but here goes!

If there’s one piece of merchandise people have been getting hyped about recently, it’s the Good Smile Company‘s Sonic Nendoroid. From the pictures show, it seemed to be a very nice figure-featuring some darn nice paint application, and a set of accessories that grew with every picture shown. So perhaps it would be a good idea to detail what you get in the box, in a full, complete fashion.

In the box, is Sonic himself, featuring his classic smile, a pair of open hands, and a pair of identical arm and leg parts. This should be noted, as he also comes with a ‘determined’ face, the classic SA1 grin face, a pair of clench fists, a thumbs up, and the classic Sonic 1 Title Screen pose. He also comes with a bent arm and a bent leg, presumably for a run pose. In addition to this, he also comes with a item monitor, which, strangely enough, seems to be based upon Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), which in addition has 5 interchangeable item panels-a Shield, an Extra Life, a Super Ring, a Speed Shoe, and an Invincibility Power Up. Save for the Extra Life image though, all of the images on these panels are again, from Sonic 06, it seems. That said, nowadays items don’t really appear in Sonic games, so I suppose 06 must have been the last game to have them-quite surprising really. Anyway, it also comes with a ring and Green Chaos Emerald-the ring looks quite nice, though obviously nothing flashy like the Sonic Generations Collectors Edition one. The Chaos Emerald, however, looks quite like a real diamond, despite being plastic! Heck, all that’s missing is the shininess of a real diamond, and it would look authentic! Finally, the box also contains a stand, and a checkpoint gate based upon Unleashed, Colours, and Generations. The gate inbetween the checkpoint markers IS removable, which is a nice touch. Also, the ring and emerald also have stands. Quite a nice package!

The box, being a Japanese import, even from Sonic Merchandise’s website, is in full Japanese, right down to the manual-however, the illustrations in the manual do a good job of explaining the thing. Fortunately, Sonic requires no assembly-in box, he comes kitted out with the aforementioned parts, with the extras included elsewhere in the box. However, in order to, for example, change Sonic’s expression, some disassembly and re-assembly will need to be done-mainly, decapitating Sonic, lifting his face off by the chin (NOT the nose-this could result in breakage of the figure) and then popping on the expression you want him to have. All of his parts are detachable and can be simply swapped or popped back on-in fact, this is, as mentioned, necessary, such as taking off his arm to pop on his alternate arm etc. However-this brings us to a slight problem with him. Right out of the box, upon trying to change his arms, for example, he felt… fragile. He nearly fell apart entirely in my hands. Although that said, removing his head, the situation improved-I wasn’t balancing as much in my hands, making it a bit easier to manage. Obviously however, this problem won’t arise if you treat him properly-keep in mind that this is not a toy. It certainly shows as well-this figure demands respect. The paint application, as the pictures from across the internet may have shown, is really, really impressive-compared to, for example, a Jazwares figure, in fact, the paint application is astonishing. Why can’t all Sonic figures have this level of detail? Even more amazing is that all this detail has been crammed onto a figure about 10cm tall-an amazing feat.

Speaking of which-he stands up quite nicely, even without the stand. Generally, the extra parts fit onto him quite well-however the joints that connect his hands to the arms seem to get pulled out of the hand into the arm far too frequently, leaving them tough to get out. In the end I opted to simply keep the joints in his arm, and just stick his hands on-it left me with a spare joint in case any of them went missing anyway. Thankfully, his leg joints do not have this problem. In terms of articulation, his head can move side to side, his arms can move up and down, his wrists can swivel, his legs can move back and forth, and his feet also swivel, and can move up and down for the classic idle foot tapping-so whilst not super articulated, he doesn’t really need to be, what with being a collectable as opposed to an action figure. He is still a great amount of fun to pose, and the lack of articulation actually brightens up the aesthetic, when compared to the intrusive joints that somewhat over bulk Jazware’s Sonic figures.

Overall, it’s safe to say this is easily one of the finest Sonic figures, if not one of the finest pieces of general Sonic merchandise, in existence-and with it’s appearance on the UK Sonic Merchandise store, it’s actually become one of the most accessible pieces of Japanese merch in recent years. Overall, I feel with all of his extras, the extremely high mold and painting standards, and heck, even the rather nice box design, the price is easily justified. If you can find this guy for under £50, I’d go for it-though I personally payed about £37 for mine, so that would be a much better price to go for.

Have you got one of these little guys? Let us know in the comments, and why not give us your thoughts on him?